


sometimes troublesome things

by displayheartcode



Category: Tithe Series - Holly Black
Genre: F/F, Original Character(s), Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 09:27:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20112868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/displayheartcode/pseuds/displayheartcode
Summary: Ruth introduces her girlfriend to Faerie.





	sometimes troublesome things

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place during A Visit to Impossible Lands.

Ruth shredded the napkin into jagged pieces. Across the table, her girlfriend stared into the contents of her china teacup. She was also waiting.

Around them, the patrons of Moon in the Cup went on with the faint shimmer of magic in the air, dull-eared humans in their college hoodies, the taste of strange berries made of dreams, people with cat-shaped eyes and glossy scales that shared the liminal space with Ruth and her friends. At the corner of her eye, she could make out Corny sulking as he made change for a phouka at the register. She heard Val in the background demanding for the fancy espresso machine to stop blubbering.

Kaye was somewhere, too. She always was in crowds like this when her two worlds mingled close.

“So…” Ruth dragged the word out through her teeth as the last of her napkin was shredded. It made a limp pile on the table. “Faerie is real. So is magic. Please don’t freak out.”

Nora shoved her teabag further into the delicate cup, causing hot water to splash over the thin rim painted in a dull shade of gold. It was an angry gesture, one of the many Ruth was learning as their relationship strained under the lies Ruth said about Kaye, explaining away her strange absences and that one time Nora had caught Val practicing with her iron sword.

But the lies had to stop at one point, and Nora had offered an ultimatum: the truth or their relationship was dead in the water.

_Val’s boyfriend isn’t some weird lurker, but he’s a friendly goblin! The weird emo guy with the long blond hair is actually a faerie king! Monsters are real!_

There were things Ruth wanted to say, about the eclectic beauty of a faerie revel at Central Park when the musicians were playing ballads mixed with pop songs, how the court gentry moved like fire and air in their mortal world, the dances and songs and adventures—

But there was also the danger.

Nevermore making Val’s eyes go blank, Luis finding his brother’s body already cold in a bag. The Fair Folk were capricious in a world ruled by glamorous and immortality.

No wonder Ruth had been drawn by Nora’s presence since their first meeting at Introduction to Film Theory in a dusty NYU basement. She could create perspectives, showing stories from different angles until the ordinary became strange and the strange ordinary. She could be just as fickle and demanding as a kelpie, but the rounded planes of her face and hazel eyes meant she was fully human.

Nora tugged the frayed string connected to her teabag. “You’re blaming the tooth fairy for being so flakey?”

“More like a pixie,” Ruth said. She picked out napkin strands and tried to create a picture. “She moving to Under the Hill to be with her boyfriend, so Corny is taking over, and everything is a mess because Kaye’s notes are all over the place.”


End file.
